It's been widely reported and that makes it fact-esque. - Stephen Colbert

Medicare Part D Cont'd: Obama Re-Ups Bush Giveaway to Big Pharma

I missed this last week but Robert Reich didn't. The Obama Admin has just promised to continue the abortion called Medicare Part D - a Bush program that has proven to be a bonanza for greedy drug makers and a nightmare for seniors who need those drugs - in exchange for their active support on his healthcare reform package.

Last week, after being reported in the Los Angeles Times, the White
House confirmed it has promised Big Pharma that any healthcare
legislation will bar the government from using its huge purchasing
power to negotiate lower drug prices. That's basically the same deal
George W. Bush struck in getting the Medicare drug benefit, and it's
proven a bonanza for the drug industry. A continuation will be an even
larger bonanza, given all the boomers who will be enrolling in Medicare
over the next decade. And it will be a gold mine if the deal extends to
Medicaid, which will be expanded under most versions of the healthcare
bills now emerging from Congress, and to any public option that might
be included. (We don't know how far the deal extends beyond Medicare
because its details haven't been made public.)

Let me remind you: Any bonanza for the drug industry means higher
healthcare costs for the rest of us, which is one reason why critics of
the emerging healthcare plans, including the Congressional Budget
Office, are so worried about their failure to adequately stem future
healthcare costs. To be sure, as part of its deal with the White House,
Big Pharma apparently has promised to cut future drug costs by $80
billion. But neither the industry nor the White House nor any
congressional committee has announced exactly where the $80 billion in
savings will show up nor how this portion of the deal will be enforced.
In any event, you can bet that the bonanza Big Pharma will reap far
exceeds $80 billion. Otherwise, why would it have agreed?

In return, Big Pharma isn't just supporting universal healthcare. It's
also spending lots of money on TV and radio advertising in support.
Sunday's New York Times reports that Big Pharma has budgeted $150
million for TV ads promoting universal health insurance, starting this
August (that's more money than John McCain spent on TV advertising in
last year's presidential campaign), after having already spent a bundle
through advocacy groups like Healthy Economies Now and Families USA.

(emphasis added)

It's a lousy trade for more reasons than I have the space to explain here, not the least of which is that big drug companies have already reaped $Billions$ from Part D and now stand to reap many $Billions$ more, so $150Mil is, like, a drop in the bucket. It's like promising to replace your neighbor's broken window - the one you just winged a rock through - but only if he'll buy you a Ferrari.

But it isn't so much that this is yet another lousy deal made by Democrats where massive goodies go to corporate sleezebags in return for almost nothing so much as that it is a prime example of business-as-usual in a fascist state: extortion, blackmail, and self-serving lies.

But I also care about democracy, and the deal between Big Pharma and
the White House frankly worries me. It's bad enough when industry
lobbyists extract concessions from members of Congress, which happens
all the time. But when an industry gets secret concessions out of the
White House in return for a promise to lend the industry's support to a
key piece of legislation, we're in big trouble. That's called
extortion: An industry is using its capacity to threaten or prevent
legislation as a means of altering that legislation for its own
benefit. And it's doing so at the highest reaches of our government, in
the office of the president.

When the industry support comes with
an industry-sponsored ad campaign in favor of that legislation, the
threat to democracy is even greater. Citizens end up paying for
advertisements designed to persuade them that the legislation is in
their interest. In this case, those payments come in the form of drug
prices that will be higher than otherwise, stretching years into the
future.

(emphasis added)

And that's just the t of the i. Avedon Carol links to a long article by Kip Sullivan on the Physicians for a National Health Program blog in which he demonstrates conclusively that the "not politically feasible" meme has been around for almost 20 years and is used almost exclusively by Democrats to excuse their refusal to consider single-payer or any other healthcare reform that doean't make private health insurance corpo's even richer. It's something you should probably read with your blood pressure medication handy.

I first heard the “political feasibility” argument from members of a
Minnesota health care reform commission in the spring and summer of
1990 when the coalition for which I was working, the Health Care
Campaign of Minnesota, started visiting commission members to drum up
support for single-payer legislation. I remember very clearly hearing
the political feasibility argument on a hot summer day in 1990 in the
office of Senator Linda Berglin, a commission member who also chaired
the Senate health committee. Berglin, who was and still is from the
safest Democratic-Farmer-Labor district in Minnesota, said she wouldn’t
support single-payer because “we can’t beat the insurance industry” (or
words almost exactly like those). A year later she was claiming that
legislation that relied on HMOs to contain cost would have a much
greater chance of passing in Minnesota and that’s what she was going to
focus on.

Over the years 1992 through 1994, Minnesota’s legislature did in
fact pass a series of bills (collectively referred to as
“MinnesotaCare”) that were supposed to achieve substantial cost
containment by encouraging faster enrollment in HMOs, and thus
establish universal health insurance by July 1, 1997. Of course, it all
fell apart, beginning in 1995. Minnesota is no closer to universal
health insurance today than it was in 1990 when I was first advised by
my betters about how politically infeasible single-payer is and how
politically feasible the HMO approach would be.

The result of this wall-to-wall political protection is just what you might expect: a system that is totally out of control. Big Pharma in particular is acting like the Mafia, and extorting the US govt in exchange for a pittance is only the beginning. Mark links to a techdirt report on Big Pharma's abuse of patent law to interdict international drug shipments.

The deeper you look at how pharmaceutical companies use and abuse the
patent system, the worse it looks. It's much more horrifying than
what's happening in the tech industry in many ways (especially since
lives are often at stake). The latest such example highlights the
desperate lengths that Big Pharma will go to, in attempts to stamp out
perfectly legal competition. India has a legal and thriving
generic drug market that was built up initially via a ban on pharma
patents in India (which, as an aside, shows again that a ban on patents
can actually help create a thriving industry). More recently, India was
forced, almost entirely against its own wishes, to implement patents on
drugs. Even so, many of its generics are not covered by patents, and
there are a number of developing countries that also do not recognize
patents on certain drugs. Thus, it should be perfectly legal for Indian
generics to ship those drugs from India to developing nations. And...
it is. Except that pharma companies have convinced EU trade officials to seize and/or destroy such shipments that pass through EU borders in transit to these developing nations.

Thus, if a legal Indian generic drug maker has a
shipment of those drugs to Peru, where the same drugs are also
perfectly legal and not blocked by patent law -- those drugs might still get seized
because en route to Peru, they may pass through some European
countries, where Big Pharma has used its lobbying clout to get customs
officials to search for and confiscate any such medicine, claiming they
are violating patents in the EU. Because of this, the Indian firms need
to spend a lot more money and ship via other means.

(emphasis added)

I'm sorry to see Europe following our lead in bending over for Big Pharma but I suppose it was bound to happen with the Obama Admin and the Harry Reid Democrats allowing them to invade other countries without consequences. Wouldn't surprise me if BP was using its cozy relationship with US leaders to intimidate EU Customs.

It's bad enough when ordinary corporations that don't have our lives in their hands act like greedy pricks. When health insurance corpo's do it, they kill people for profit. And our Democrats just made it easier for them to do that.

With an industry this criminal, there can't be any compromise with our healthcare. They've proved in both Minnesota and Mass that if they are any part of it they will pervert it beyond redemption in the name of profit. Any "public option" other than single-payer can't work as long as they're involved. Period.

Bang for the Buck: Boosting the American Economy

Compassionate Conservatism in Action

Molly

"We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war."

Zinn

"[O]ur time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on matters of war and social justice."

Bono

"True religion will not let us fall asleep in the comfort of our freedom. Love thy neighbor is not a piece of advice, it's a command. ...

God, my friends, is with the poor and God is with us, if we are with them. This is not a burden, this is an adventure."

The Reverend Al Sharpton

Ray wasn't singing about what he knew, 'cause Ray had been blind since he was a child. He hadn't seen many purple mountains. He hadn't seen many fruited plains. He was singing about what he believed to be.

Mr. President, we love America, not because of all of us have seen the beauty all the time.

But we believed if we kept on working, if we kept on marching, if we kept on voting, if we kept on believing, we would make America beautiful for everybody.

Marx

''With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 percent will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 percent will produce eagerness, 50 percent positive audacity; 100 percent will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 percent, and there is not a crime which it will not scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged.''